What if 2020 is the revival we’ve been praying for?
While running the other day, I was listening to a podcast that was talking about how the church prays for revival but often misses it when it comes. Thinking about revival sounds great and fun, but when it comes, we don’t recognize it because it might not look the way we expected.
This got me thinking—what if all that has come our way in 2020 is going to bring that revival we’ve prayed for? What if we stopped thinking about the negative impacts of 2020 and leveraged all the mess for a greater cause? For the expansion of God’s Kingdom?
Revival, in biblical terms, is an awakening. It is people coming to know the Lord on a deeper level than ever before. There’s no doubt our world needs it. We need Jesus. We always have, and we always will.
I’m sure you’ve heard 2 Chronicles 7:14 a lot recently, because it is very applicable for our times. The validity and necessity of it is so important. It says, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
In this verse, we see that God wants to bring healing. He wants revival. We want revival. But we won’t have revival without first humbling ourselves before God.
And here’s the hard part: We can’t have revival without needing to be healed or having the need to be revived from something.
That’s just not going to look pretty from the onset. We have to let go of this glamorized view we have of revival and be willing to accept what it actually looks like. Revival doesn’t come from what’s already great and good. It comes from the hard. It comes from the difficult. It comes from the desolate places.
So trust God today. His hand is on 2020, and His hand will be with us going into 2021. His hand is on everything we go through. Let all the bad bring about revival. Revival takes work, but if that work results in the lost finding salvation and healing in Jesus, then it’s worth every bit of it. For revival, for healing, we must become humble and pray and be willing to do the groundwork to be used by God.
We prayed for revival. Here it is.
